Poland, No Stranger To Russian Aggression, Takes Leadership Role In Helping Ukraine
Ali Velshi looks back at a tense time in 1980 when the Soviet Union was seen as threatening to invade Poland as a pro-democracy movement began to grow in opposition to communism.
We Poles, but also Slovaks and Czechs know Russians better than any other NATO member. We (Poles) had wars with them, some we won (1919), some we lost (1939). We've been occupied by Russian army after WW2 until 1989. We know their mentality. Our politicians from left and right warned UE and US tried to explain than Russia never abandoned their imperialistic ambitions, that going soft on them will only cause another war. They think diffrend than Europeans or Americans, they respect only power, they always did, since Stalin.
In years, even centuries, past, pugnacious Poland has been the pivoting factor in Europe's survival on more than one occasion - and then I am not even just talking about Sobieski and his "Winged Hussars" driving off the Ottoman forces besieging Vienna in 1683. Poles have been called "the last Europeans" for good reason!
Eastern-European countries are leading by example these days. For long, we were laughed at for ringing the alarm about Russia, but now everyone understands how putting business ahead of security can have such severe consequences..
I remember this so vividly in 1980. My godfather along with Zbigniew Brzezinski advised Reagan on how to deal with the situation. At the time he advised that the US be firm but also cautioned doing anything to exacerbate the situation and give the Soviets another excuse to invade Poland because Poles would fight. A Soviet invasion would have been catastrophic for the Poles causing immense bloodshed and they had no chance of prevailing because he knew how the Soviets would react from the 1956 Hungarian uprising and the 1968 Prague Spring. And NATO and US could not directly help.
"Thankfully" Jaruzelski declared Marshall law in the nick of time - which prevented the Soviet invasion and thus, ironically, saving Poland from a a catastrophe, , even though the crackdown on dissent was bloody and brutal. He and Brzezinski convinced Reagan, who at the knew little about Poland, or foreign politics, to play the long game, by supporting Solidarity. But my godfather also felt that Reagan had an uncommon instinct that the events around that time was of immense significance and began to understand that this was the beginning of the end for Soviet communism and decided to play the long game, by supporting Solidarity and by massively increasing US defence expenditure for he knew that the Soviets could not match.
I remember this stuff when I was a kid, and Gorbachev was in power in the Soviet Union, and he didn't repress the uprisings because he wanted to introduce change and democracy in Russia as well, and everyone in the west loved him. And I was really surprised to discover later that he was not popular in Russia. I guess I was being naiive, because the reason a lot of Russians didn't like him was because they blamed him for losing their empire, but the fact was that when Gorbachev came to power the USSR was on the brink of economic collapse anyway.
